Tuesday, April 29, 2014

I was at the lake early yesterday despite the thunderstorms we were having. I'm not sure why I even stopped other than my camera gear was already in the truck and I was close by. The rain let up somewhat after I got there, but the nearby lightning almost made me decide to abandon my idea. I took a few photos on one end of the lake and then the rain started coming down too hard again. I packed up my gear and drove to the other end just to take a look before leaving.

The fickle rain let up by the time I made the drive to the opposite end, so I parked and got my gear back out. I noticed a bird over the lake and at first glance thought it was a gull. As it passed overhead, I realized it was an osprey. It was the first one I had ever seen in my home area and turned out to be the very first one I've ever photographed. It was making passes from one end of the lake to the other sometimes slowing down to hover briefly.

You can't tell from the photos, but the sky was a very dark gray and it was drizzling. The lighting was absolutely terrible for my big lens. I had to overexpose my photos by 1 1/3 stops just to keep the osprey from being a black blob. Even at a high ISO, my shutter speed was slow for flight shots. Sometimes you just have to do the best you can. I wasn't able to photograph the dive bomb because the osprey was too far down the lake, but fortunately it did fly back by me with the fish. Considering it would have been easier just to go home, I was happy with the outcome.